Digital control applications may include analog input signals supplied to an analog to digital converter (ADC) component for conversion into a digital signal. An ADC converts a continuous physical quantity (usually voltage) to a digital number that represents the quantity's amplitude. Instead of doing a single conversion, an ADC often performs conversions (“samples”) of the input periodically. The result is a sequence of digital values that have been converted from a continuous-time and continuous-amplitude analog signal to a discrete-time and discrete-amplitude digital signal.
ADCs are commonly used in the electronic field, for example, during data acquisition or data reproduction. As an illustration, microcontrollers often comprise analog to digital converters (ADCs) which convert an analog voltage applied to their input pin to a digital value.
Many types of ADCs are commonly used. A successive approximation (SAR) ADC is a type of analog-to-digital converter that converts a continuous analog waveform into a discrete digital representation via a binary search through all possible quantization levels before finally converging upon a digital output for each conversion. In particular, a SAR ADC comprises an input multiplexer that allows selection of an analog input channel from a plurality of analog input channels connected to the input pins of the ADC. The conversion may be based on a controlled timing sequence or based on various events.